NY Jets will stick with Geno Smith, no matter how well Mike Vick plays

New York Daily News | Aug 10

You know why the Jets have to be right about Geno Smith? They have to be right because if they’re not, it means they were wrong about two quarterbacks in a row.

It didn’t look that way at the start with Mark Sanchez, when the Jets were making it to two AFC championship games in a row. But they were wrong. Now Sanchez is gone to Philadelphia, and even people in outer space know that the starting job is Geno’s to lose, even though nobody thinks he is going to lose it unless he slashes the tires on the team bus. And maybe not even then.

Once the Jets turned into the circus when Tim Tebow came to town to back up Sanchez, so the Jets have done everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen again now that Mike Vick is the lefthander backing up Geno. Vick is not really competing for the starting job, it’s not even a competition, Geno so far has taken 80 percent of the first-team snaps.

And after the first preseason game the other night, after Geno had gone 4-for-6 with 33 passing yards, Rex Ryan talked about how well Geno had played. He even used the word “great” in assessing that performance, talking about how well Geno stepped up in the pocket and protected the ball.

Vick on the same night wasn’t exactly electrifying in his own small sampling, 3-for-6 he was, with 17 yards. But he did take the Jets on a long touchdown drive and got everybody’s blood flowing a couple of times with scrambles, and gave you (brief) reminders of why there was a time when we thought he really was going to be the most electrifying player in the game, before injuries and prison stole so much of his prime and his magic.